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Blinkx.tv And Heinlein's Newsbox
In his 1941 story Methuselah's Children, Robert Heinlein wrote about a more advanced form of television called a newsbox:
A new service at Blinkx.tv provides the capability to search the web for video
(and audio) clips. Blinkx claims to be unique among other providers in that
you can not only search with standard keywords and Boolean queries, but you
can also enter normal text for a conceptual search. The search is done on a
transcript of the words taken from the soundtrack of the television video
clip.
"I was looking for the newsbox. Mind if we throw it on the screen?"
"Not at all." The smaller man stood up, pressed the rewind button, and set the controls for projection. "Any particular subject?"
"I wanted to see," said Lazarus, "if there was any news about us-the Families."
"I've been watching for that myself. Perhaps we had better use the sound track and let it hunt."
"Okay," agreed Lazarus, stepping up and changing the setting to audio. "What's the code word?'
"'Methuselah.'"
Lazarus punched in the setting; the machine chattered and whined as it scanned and rejected the track speeding through it, then it slowed with a triumphant click.
(Read more about Robert Heinlein's newsbox)
(From Blinx.tv)
The homepage starts with an interesting application; a large matrix of screen capture thumbnails. Some of them are moving; run your cursor over the moving thumbnail, and get a short text summary. Click on the thumbnail to see the clip.
(From Blinx.tv)
This interface looks quite similar to an earlier effort - see 10x10's User Interface Cooler Than Google's By A Factor Of Ten for more information. Finally, here's a shot of a standard search results page:
(From Blinx.tv)
Blinkx.tv also provides Smart Folders, which reside on your PC. Content is automatically pushed to these folders, based on user-specified criteria, keeping them current for offline viewing.
Read more about Blinkx.tv and other similar services here.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/3/2005)
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